German Verb Stems

Welcome to this free German lesson on verb stems!

In order to conjugate a verb, you first need to identify the verb stem. The stem is the part of the verb that, in most cases, remains constant. In German, you usually find the stem by taking the infinitive of the verb and removing the –en, or -n ending.

German verbs can fall in three categories:

Weak (regular)

Strong (irregular)

Weak verbs are regular verbs and their stem never changes.
Strong verbs change their stem. The stem may only change in the past tense conjugation or in the present tense as well.

Let's see these two groups in more detail.

German Weak Verbs

As we've seen, weak verbs are entirely regular, and the good news is that the majority of German verbs fall in this category. To find their stem, you simply remove the -en or -n ending. Here are a few example verbs.

Verbs whose stem ends in a -d or a -t, like arbeiten, add an -e before all conjugation endings for pronunciation purposes. From this we have arbeitet (arbeit + e + t ending for third person singular).

German Strong verbs

Strong verbs are irregular verbs, so their stem can sometimes change depending on the tense. Let's take gehen, to go, as an example: its stem in the present tense is regular, geh-, but in the simple past tense it becomes ging-. Sometimes it's the stem in the past participle that changes, and other times the verb has an irregular stem in the present tense.